STEUBENVILLE — Eastern Gateway Community College and the U.S. Department of Education have reached a tentative settlement in their battle over the college’s Free College Benefits program.

College officials notified U.S. District Court in Columbus of the settlement agreement Thursday, filing a notice of voluntary dismissal of a September civil suit against Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and the Department of Education “pursuant to a preliminary and tentative settlement agreement.”

The college had requested, and been granted, a preliminary injunction barring DOE from enforcing orders that would have forced EGCC to stop offering the program and submit a teach-out agreement.

No details of the settlement were available from the court.

Dennis Willard, spokesman for EGCC, said Friday evening only that the college had “been involved in good faith and fruitful negotiations” with DOE during the past several months, “and we have jointly come to a preliminary agreement.”

“There are still some final points to settle, but we believe when resolved, Eastern Gateway Community College will be positioned to continue our mission to put our students first by offering them the lowest cost option to pursue a path toward a higher education,” Willard said.

The free college program, which has been offered through a public-private partnership in Ohio and across the country, helped transform EGCC into a nationally recognized online institution, but the education department contended its meteoric growth had been funded wrongly with the needs-based Pell Grants federal aid program, meant to help low-income students get college degrees.

Department officials had alleged the college violated financial aid rules by subsidizing the FCB program with Pell Grant money they’d awarded to income-eligible students, and in July 2022 the education department ordered the college to stop offering the FCB program and submit the teach-out agreement.

EGCC filed suit in U.S. District Court in Columbus two months later seeking preliminary and permanent injunctions preventing the education department from enforcing its edict. The college claimed Cardona and the DOE had violated its right to due process by issuing the orders without affording them a chance to respond.

In October, a federal judge granted EGCC’s request for the preliminary injunction enjoining DOE from limiting the school’s access to federal student financial aid. Since then, the case had been mired in legal briefs, but in a May 23 motion for summary judgment, EGCC suggested the education department had slowed student aid reimbursements to a trickle. In that motion, EGCC told a federal judge DOE had processed “only $8.5 million of the more than $25 million in federal student aid it is owed,” threatening the college’s fiscal stability.

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment when reached Friday evening.